cadet blogs

Week three went even faster than week two (and I said that was fast)—not to mention that due to the holiday (Memorial Day), we only had a four day week. The week was spent mostly preparing to take over my collateral duties from the lieutenant junior grade (LTJG) who was departing at the end of the week for a new unit. There were a few other side projects here and there, but I mostly worked on preparing the memos (letters of designation) that would formalize the record of my duties. Most of the memos were easy and straight forward, but the one I worked on for the communications officer relief was a bit more involved. I had to become familiar with the work being done and what needed to be done by the communications division onboard the ship as well as know the status of required drills and inspections.

Like many projects, the majority of the work ended up taking place on Friday, the last day that the officer was here. It was a whirlwind but everything got completed on time. I still have much to learn about my responsibilities but thankfully the members of the crew in the division are willing to help. I know enough to stand as their division officer, which is a pretty exciting experience. It just so happens that there is a gap between the departure of one officer and the arrival of her replacement, so in the interim, I get to fill in! It doesn’t always happen like that for other 1/c cadets on other cutters. What a great preview of the year to come and my first few years as an officer!

A highlight for this week was on Wednesday when Andy and I joined members of the cutter’s law enforcement team at their boarding officer training. They were reviewing the handcuffing and escort techniques we learned in Personal Defense II at school. It was great to see that we were learning the same techniques they teach in the fleet. There were some escorts that we hadn’t learned yet, and the instructors had a few tips for making the ones we had learned more effective. We basically had several personal instructors, which was a much better learning environment than a large class at school.

And as usual, I’ll conclude with a leadership lesson for this week. Again, it’s difficult to pin one thing down. I think the lesson that I learned that stood out to me the most was not quite one about leadership, but more about being a good manager. This week showed me some best practices for passing off assignments and duties to successors. Most importantly, I realized that during this relief process I should start preparing for the next relief process when I pass off the responsibilities. In this case, of course, that will be in a few weeks, but something to remember for next year is that with my collateral duties, I should keep good notes about what I did and when and how so that I can remember the details and intricacies of the duty right off the bat and not here and there. A well-organized collateral binder is super helpful, as I found out this week.

That’s all for now, but I’ll be writing again before I know it!

(I didn’t like that we got to go out to lunch in civvies when the rest of the crew was working hard, it was hot, and they didn’t get libo…sigh, military)